Saturday Nightmare

• Connor Lombe
• Short Story
• 2010

The other day, I was looking through my bookshelf when I came across an old photo album. I leafed through, page by page. A much younger me stared back. There I was, ten years younger, looking so different. I felt so strange as I peered back into my history. I stopped on one particular photo and was mesmerised. I floated back into time and when I came to, I noticed I was crying.

The night had felt so cold as we got into the car, its sleek black curves seemingly melted into the night, as if it was meant only to be driven in the cover of darkness. It sped across the road like skater on ice, weaving in and out of Saturday night traffic.

As we hit the countryside the roads became slick and the air foggy, and all of a sudden the heavens opened and the rain roared forth from the clouds.

My parents were always fast drivers, my dad saying that if you needed to get somewhere, why not so it as fast as possible. I didn’t see their logic, because everyone, including myself knew that speed kills.
My parents didn’t realise that until too late, as the semi-trailer swung round from the corner of the turn, if dad had been going slower, he would’ve had time to stop, unfortunately we sliced across the left side of the semi, and skewed off the side of the road ploughing down the leafy emerald hill.

As the car skidded and rolled, the family that was inside it was screaming and being thrown around the metal shell, glass breaking, and metal twisting, my memory of that one moment still haunted dreams and nightmares.
The car slowed and stopped it spinning and crunched down to the ground, silver metal twisted and broken, and fluids leaking, as if a knight in armour had been brought down by a thousand crushing blows.

I woke up inside of a white room, the walls sterile, with a metallic taste in the back of my throat, and with vision blurred. The tube down my throat impaired my breathing, and my body felt like it had gone ten rounds with a prize-fighter, I slipped back into the dream like state of unconsciousness. The weeks inside of the hospital after my accident seemed to duplicate my feelings; the stormy nights after the escape and the grey cloudy days mirrored my mind set that the world seemed to hate me.

But as it always does it ended and I was discharged, wheeled slowly out of the hospital like a sloth along a tree branch by my parents (they had escaped all injuries) and drove away, albeit much slower, and in a different car.